The travels, travails and joys of missionary service for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Brazil.

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Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Getting Ready for Thanksgiving in the MTC

I hear Thanksgiving in the MTC is the best! There is a rumor going around the MTC that Elder Holland is coming with his family. I sure hope that is true! I would LOVE to see Elder Holland. Getting to hear Elder Perry last week was outstanding! I love hearing the apostles speak. Especially about missionary work. The devotionals here are life changing. Sunday night this woman named Sis Edmunds came, she was a BYU Nursing professor back in the day, and she was an awesome speaker! She was assigned to Brazil, got reassigned to New York waiting for her visa, and then got reassigned to the Phillipines! And she didn't even speak any Filipino! Crazzzzyy!

Anyway, I'm happy to hear all is well in TC and I knew mommy's prophecy to me in the car on the way back from shopping would come true. She said she was going to convince you to buy a Dart...I didn't really believe her, but as we learned from my big fat greek wedding, the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head any way she wants! hahahaha :) Make sure to give everyone a hug for me when ya'll get to Kansas!

Okay, ready for funny story time? Yesterday, Sister Allred and I were teaching our "investigator" David. He's a 16 year old Brazilian teenager who got tracted into one day, and now we're working with him. He's awesome! (also he's our teacher Irmao Smith! And another funny story, one day, Irmao didn't show up to class, and we were all kinda like huh...guess we'll just study. 30 minutes later our other teacher Irma Dangerfield walks in and told us Irmao Smith was riding his bike on the way to the MTC and got hit by a car! He's okay, but he has crutches now and a scrape on his face...poor guy).

Anyway, back to David, I was saying the opening prayer in the lesson and was praying that his knee would heal correctly and quickly. Well I forgot the word for heal (curar), so I just said it in English, well heal sounds a whole lot like hell and he thought I said hell (and of course he knew that word in English), so he was very confused why I was praying about his knee going to hell, so we had to spend a few minutes clearing that up, and then he proceeded to tease me about it randomly throughout the lesson! It was pretty great.

We had TRC for the first time this week! TRC is where members who speak Portuguese come in and we just teach them as members. It was an awesome experience! We taught this guy, who was visiting from BYU-H (he didn't know Giancarlo) and me and my companion have been practicing teaching by the Spirit and becoming instruments to Him (the real teacher) and not teaching what we want.

When I walked in I wanted to teach about prayer and how we can receive direction from God about what to do in our lives, but then the Spirit just whispered, hold on, don't say anything. So I didn't, and there was a long silence, then my companion just asked him if he had any questions for us. He paused and then told us about his friend whose wife recently died and he didn't know what to say to comfort him. Then the we just started talking about the Atonement and how it didn't just cover our sins, but Christ went through every pain and sorrow we'd ever feel so that we could lean on Him and He would understand what we were going through, and we testified that his friend could gain peace and comfort by leaning on Christ and trusting in Him. We read a couple scriptures in the lesson wanting to go one way with them, and then he went a completely different direction with it. It was really cool to see the Spirit working in him and teaching him, and let me tell ya, the Spirit brings people closer to Christ, not us!

One of my favorite things about being a missionary is my tag! :) Anytime of the day, including right now, I can look down and see my name "Sister Byrne" and the name of our Savior "Jesus Cristo". It's awesome and it's so tender and precious to me. I love Him so much, and I love having his name right next to mine on my little tag over my little heart :)